SQL Injection

SQL Injection is a critical authentication bypass vulnerability where attackers manipulate input fields to inject malicious SQL code that alters the intended query logic. In the context of gaining unauthorized access, attackers exploit improperly sanitized inputs in login forms to circumvent authentication mechanisms entirely. A common approach involves injecting conditions that always evaluate to true (e.g., ' OR 1=1 --), which can trick vulnerable systems into authenticating without valid credentials. More sophisticated attacks might use UNION-based injections to extract credentials from user tables, blind SQL injection techniques to systematically extract authentication data, or error-based methods to retrieve authentication information from database error messages. This authentication bypass technique requires minimal resources while potentially yielding complete unauthorized access to applications, making it consistently ranked among OWASP's top web application security risks.

Mitigations

ID	Mitigation	Description
M1054	Software Configuration	Use parameterized queries/ORMs and enforce strict input sanitization on login fields.
M1040	Behavior Prevention on Endpoint	Enable database-layer CADR/WAF/IPS that blocks query patterns containing tautologies (e.g., ' OR 1=1 --).

Detection

ID	Data Source	Detection
DS0029	Network Traffic Content	Detect login requests containing SQL meta-characters or comment sequences.
DS0015	Application Log	Monitor DB error logs for syntax errors or OR/UNION statements originating from /login routes.
CADR001	Execution Stack Trace	Baseline and continuously profile the call-stack fingerprints produced by the database process during normal, authenticated query execution. Alert when a new or rare stack trace appears—especially ones that invoke dynamic-SQL or string-concatenation routines, jump into OS-level execution APIs, contain error-handling paths normally reached only on syntax faults.